Still, for those who don’t read the paper, a few extracts from me and no surprises for readers who have worked their way through this series:

This year, we focus on Germany and its Energiewende plan (deep de-carbonization of the electricity grid in which 80% of demand is met by renewable energy), and on a California version we refer to as Caliwende.

A critical part of any analysis of high-renewable systems is the cost of backup thermal power and/or storage needed to meet demand during periods of low renewable generation. These costs are substantial; as a result, levelized costs of wind and solar are not the right tools to use in assessing the total cost of a high-renewable system

Emissions. High-renewable grids reduce CO2 emissions by 65%-70% in Germany and 55%-60% in California vs. the current grid. Reason: backup thermal capacity is idle for much of the year

Costs. High-renewable grid costs per MWh are 1.9x the current system in Germany, and 1.5x in California. Costs fall to 1.6x in Germany and 1.2x in California assuming long-run “learning curve” declines in wind, solar and storage costs, higher nuclear plant costs and higher natural gas fuel costs

Storage. The cost of time-shifting surplus renewable generation via storage has fallen, but its cost, intermittent utilization and energy loss result in higher per MWh system costs when it is added

Nuclear. Balanced systems with nuclear power have lower estimated costs and CO2 emissions than high-renewable systems. However, there’s enormous uncertainty regarding the actual cost of nuclear power in the US and Europe, rendering balanced system assessments less reliable. Nuclear power is growing in Asia where plant costs are 20%-30% lower, but political, historical, economic, regulatory and cultural issues prevent these observations from being easily applied outside of Asia

Location and comparability. Germany and California rank in the top 70th and 90th percentiles with respect to their potential wind and solar energy (see Appendix I). However, actual wind and solar energy productivity is higher in California (i.e., higher capacity factors), which is the primary reason that Energiewende is more expensive per MWh than Caliwende. Regions without high quality wind and solar irradiation may find that grids dominated by renewable energy are more costly

They also comment that they excluded transmission costs from their analysis, but this “.. could substantially increase the estimated cost of high-renewable systems..”

Their assessment of the future German system with 80% renewables:

Backup power needs unchanged. Germany’s need for thermal power (coal and natural gas) does not fall with Energiewende, since large renewable generation gaps result in the need for substantial backup capacity (see Appendix II), and also since nuclear power has been eliminated

Emissions sharply reduced. While there’s a lot of back-up thermal capacity required, for much of the year, these thermal plants are idle. Energiewende results in a 52% decline in natural gas generation vs. the current system, and a 63% decline in CO2 emissions

Cost almost double current system. The direct cost of Energiewende, using today’s costs as a reference point, is 1.9x the current system. Compared to the current system, Energiewende reduces CO2 emissions at a cost of $300 per metric ton

They contrast the renewable options (with no storage and various storage options) with nuclear:

From JP Morgan 2015

Nuclear is the bottom line in the table – the effective $ cost of CO2 reduction is vastly improved. Their comments on nuclear costs (and the uncertainties) are well worth reading.

They look at California by way of this comment:

Energiewende looks expensive, even when assuming future learning curve cost declines. Could the problem be that Germany is the wrong test case?

This is the same point I made in X – Nationalism vs Inter-Nationalism. The California example looks a lot better, in terms of the cost of reducing CO2 emissions. If your energy sources are wind and solar, and you want to reduce global CO2 emissions, it makes (economic) sense to spend your $ on the most effective method of reducing CO2.

Basically, they reach their conclusions from the following critical elements:

energy cannot be stored economically

time-series data demonstrates that, even when wind power is sourced over a very wide area, there will always be multiple days where the wind/solar energy is “a lot lower” than usual

The choices are:

spend a crazy amount on storage

build out (average) supply to many times actual demand

backup intermittent solar/wind with conventional

build a lot of nuclear power

These are obvious conclusions after reading 100 papers. The alternatives are:

ignore the time-series problem

assume demand management will save the day (more on this in a subsequent article)

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“The choices are:
spend a crazy amount on storage
build out (average) supply to many times actual demand
backup intermittent solar/wind with conventional
build a lot of nuclear power”

Excellent nutshell summary.

It seems to me that in option 3, solar/wind should not be regarded as stand alone electricity sources; the entire system, including backup conventional power, should be regarded as the source. Such a system is not zero CO2, it is only reduced CO2. So if CO2 emissions are as big a problem as some say, then solar/wind could be a dangerous box canyon. Once we push it as far as you can go with option 3, then what? Costs will have gone up a lot, but we won’t have the desired long-term CO2 reductions. People will strongly resist going to the even more expensive options 1 and 2. And option 4 will mean plowing under much of the huge investment in solar/wind. So it is quite likely that the expensive-but-inadequate option 3 will be effectively locked in.

It gets even worse when we consider the 60% of energy use that is not electricity. I think that transportation is the biggest part of that, followed by space heating. In both cases the best options to reduce fossil fuel use appear to be to shift to electricity for plug-in vehicles and heat pumps. Those offer increased thermodynamic efficiency at the both the point of energy use and the point of electricity production. So, even if the electricity is fossil fuel generated, CO2 emissions could be reduced. And, of course, those technologies allow for energy sources other than fossil fuel. But rapidly rising electricity prices will slow the adoption of those technologies thus prolonging the use of fossil fuels as the main energy sources for transportation and space heating.

I think that a forced, rapid build up of solar and wind could actually have the effect of increasing total CO2 emissions in the long term. That would be a huge lose-lose.

Of course, if global warming is only an excuse to force a big build up of wind and solar, then the above is irrelevant.

This renewables racket requires energy interdependency (eg. interconnectors)…quite a nice little imperialism scheme when you have semiconductor capabilities to do the job of synchronization and switching. Who wouldn’t like to be the command center of Renewables Worldwide Inc. No wonder both Germany and California love this renewables irregardless of wind/solar capacity. The utilities grade battery storage fiasco is a nice little opportunity for arbitrage too…

Really strange that the JP Morgue is pushing nuclear in that article…oh no I guess it isn’t that strange…the PigWigs like mining for subsidies and Oh Boy is nuclear a big mother for subsidies…way bigger than renewables.

I don’t know why people on these blogs are focused on economics…surely power and control is the real objective here…think Machivellian.

Who knows why people do things? JP Morgan has written an excellent paper to inform potential investors in renewable energy. Perhaps it is a subtle ruse to sell some product they have an investment in. Or perhaps it is just an excellent paper to inform potential investors.

I don’t know why people on these blogs are focused on economics…surely power and control is the real objective here

There are much better blogs for your ideas, with much larger audiences. Here we focus on the science and not on imputing heinous motives.

I don’t see the four choices as mutually exclusive – a combination is most likely.

But there’s also a fifth choice which some seem to suggest is nigh on impossible in the US but is much more feasible in Europe: push hard on energy efficiency to drive down demand substantially. That way you don’t have to build out anywhere near as much renewables / backup / storage / nuclear.

In my view strong energy efficiency is a pre-requisite to a high renewables society and this is where Germany has been going wrong (they’re not bad at it, they just need to push much harder). It never seems to get even a mention in high nuclear scenarios though and I suspect that we wouldn’t see much of it.

The choices are not mutually exclusive, but a combination is unlikely unless people are honest about the problems with wind and solar.

For instance, one might argue that conventional backup is a bridge to 100% wind/solar is achieved by overbuilding. But amounts to a bait-and-switch, since the latter is much more expensive than the former. If the objective is 100% renewable, then wind should be costed as appropriate to that objective; i.e., by using the capacity credit instead of the capacity factor. That would roughly triple the cost of wind, which people will not accept.

One could certainly have a bunch of nuclear and a bunch of wind backed up by conventional, as in the balanced case in the JP Morgan report. But that requires severely limiting the amount of wind that is built, so that even when output is high there is a place for nuclear in the system.

The real issue is that proponents of wind and solar need to be upfront about the realistic choices, rather than simply ignoring the problems. Otherwise, we risk entering a box canyon where one choice does in fact exclude the others.

Let’s say we go down a high efficiency, high renewables path but low cost storage remains elusive then we would have a lean, efficient demand base which would make it much more straightforward to enact a pivot across to high penetration nuclear.

Increased efficiency is certainly a win-win, but it is not a magic bullet. We already use energy quite efficiently. Improvements are surely possible, but for the most part they are neither easy or cheap.

I don’t know what you mean when you say that Germany needs to “push much harder”. I hope you don’t mean driving up the price drastically so that even more people are forced into energy poverty, forced to shiver in the dark so that they can afford to eat.

Rationing, whether implicit or explicit , and improved efficiency both reduce demand, but they are not the same thing.

The only technology I can see forcing us down a box canyon is nuclear with its high capital costs, long lead times, long lifetimes and inflexibility which mean that we’ll be completely committed to it if we take that path.

Personally I don’t push 100% renewables but I think that getting somewhere close should be the aim. Conventional backup and a bit of nuclear can fill in the gaps as storage costs come down (which is happening and quickly; the interesting and open question is of course how low it will go).

As you point out, a lot of nuclear crowds out renewables. But agile, smart demand can help here as electric vehicles and heat storage can play a very useful role in soaking up excess supply should electricity storage remain prohibitively expensive.

No doubt someone will come back with “ah but we could go high nuclear with its lower cost energy AND low demand” which is of course true, but I’m yet to see a scenario which proposes that and I’d be amazed if that scenario ever played out. Nukes need a steady demand to soak up their steady supply. Renewables need agile demand to soak up their agile supply.

Obviously efficiency isn’t a magic bullet but it constantly amazes me that these studies almost exclusively consider the supply side in isolation. That neglects half of the electricity system which is, to be frank, a pretty bit omission.

As for using energy quite efficiently, I don’t recognise the world you refer to. Having predominantly thermal plant means that in excess of half of the energy used in electricity generation is rejected as heat. Internal combustion engines in vehicles are even worse. Lighting efficiency could be improved roughly fivefold. Best in class refrigeration uses about a third of stock average.
Building efficiency is, broadly speaking, terrible nearly everywhere. I could go on. We are a very, very long way from living in an efficient society by any measure.

And my reference to Germany pushing harder was in energy efficiency. I guess they’re constrained by EU policy on energy using products but they should have worked to move that policy much further forward than they have in tandem with their supply side activities.

What I believe is that high energy prices are not to be feared if energy demand is low. Clearly within a high price, low demand scenario it is absolutely key that vulnerable people should be insulated (literally and metaphorically) from high energy prices, which is challenging, but it is achievable.

Please cite the technology available now or in the next decade at large scale that can generate electricity more efficiently and at similar cost to a combined cycle thermal plant. Even nuclear plants are thermal, by the way. Otherwise it’s in the same category as magic batteries that are cheap, efficient, quickly rechargeable and last nearly forever.

“agile, smart demand can help here as electric vehicles and heat storage can play a very useful role in soaking up excess supply … Nukes need a steady demand to soak up their steady supply. Renewables need agile demand to soak up their agile supply.”

There is nothing agile about renewables. Agility implies the ability to respond quickly to changing conditions, renewables can not do that at all. Nuclear can do that, at least to a degree, but it is expensive compared to maintaining constant output.

A steady demand to soak up a steady supply is relatively easy. Agile demand is something that we have no idea how to do in a practical manner. Plug-in vehicles use electricity at night when demand is low, creating a more steady demand. But you can not reasonably expect everyone to stop driving for a week because it is not windy. Ground source heat pumps reduce peak demand in most locations (much less power needed for air conditioning) and increase demand when it is low; thus making demand more steady. But it does not make demand more agile since demand is still controlled by the weather. Electrochemical hydrogen production, if it can be made efficient, will demand a steady supply of energy, not an intermittent supply. To convert diurnal demand curves into near constant demand would require 2 to 3 hours of storage; that is not crazy expensive even at present battery costs, although it is quite a bit more expensive than natural gas peaking plants. But to even out synoptic variations in wind and solar will require at least an order of magnitude more storage. Even with things as they are, about 60% of electricity production is meeting steady baseload demand, something that wind and solar have no prospect of being able to do economically.

You wrote: “As for using energy quite efficiently, I don’t recognise the world you refer to.”

Well, that would be the real world in which theoretical efficiency will always be less than 100%, achievable efficiency will always fall well short of theoretical efficiency, economically practical efficiency will always fall short of achievable efficiency, and average efficiency of existing infrastructure will always be less than current best practice (at least as long as we continue to make progress).

There is a natural economic driver towards increased efficiency in energy use and there is every reason to expect that will continue. But as DeWitt points out, that is more likely to be expressed in increased standard of living than reduced energy use.

Perhaps you are one of those environmentalists who think we should reduce our standard of living. I reject such a dismal future.

I see steady demand with some peaks. I see that over 70% of the total energy demanded over a year is actually rock solid (I haven’t calculated the value). Demand never drops below 25GW (if it did occasionally it wouldn’t matter) so you absolutely need generation that just keeps “non-agily” producing electricity.

And on those occasions where demand spikes at over 50GW (not this year so far) you absolutely need “agile” plants to come online. As Mike has already pointed out, wind and solar are not “agile supply” because they don’t meet the definition of “agile”.

Now it would be wonderful if conventional power generation was more “agile” than it is now because as large amounts of wind come onto the existing network – with priority, as mandated by many regulators – the unfilled demand is much more volatile than before. And apart from some peaker stations, the generation network was not designed for it.

This “lack of agility” isn’t a problem where conventional power stations are “less agile” than renewables. It’s a problem because Demand – Wind Generation is very volatile. It’s a problem because wind is “anti-agile”. Wind is inflexible and volatile, which is a lot worse than inflexible.

Does this mean I’m “against” wind and solar? No. I’m in favor of understanding the real subject and the benefits and problems of intermittent renewables. See Part One of this series.

..But there’s also a fifth choice which some seem to suggest is nigh on impossible in the US but is much more feasible in Europe: push hard on energy efficiency to drive down demand substantially. That way you don’t have to build out anywhere near as much renewables / backup / storage / nuclear..

Reducing aggregrate demand is of course great for reducing emissions.

But it’s hard to see how reducing demand helps – in any substantial way – for dealing with an intermittent supply source that might be unable to provide more than 10% – 20% of its typical output for a few days at a time.

The Ontario experience with wind has to be among the world’s worst. Most of our power comes from nuclear (~52%) and hydro (~26%). Our provincial government has provided heavy subsidies and as a result we now have a substantial subsidized wind industry.

Our highest power demand is on hot summer days, which also tend to be very still. On such days, the availability of wind power is about 4%, down to 0% for many locations.

The highest wind production is in shoulder seasons (March, October) when we don’t need the wind power. As a result, the power is dumped to nearby jurisdictions, with the utility paying them to take the power.

Ontario has gotten totally whipsawed. When there were few wind farms, it didn’t matter too much, but it has now gotten to be a problem for our industry, which is already struggling.

It’s really hard to see how one could responsibly assume that wind could be a foundation of power supply in our jurisdiction.

Another beautiful theory smashed on the hard rocks of reality. Of course, Ontario is pretty much a worst case scenario since you already have a very low carbon electricity generating system which does not readily accommodate wind. Texas seems to be having less trouble integrating a larger amount of wind, but Texas relies almost entirely on fossil fuels for the rest of its power. That is the damnable thing about wind: Its natural ally is fossil fuel.

To follow up on Steve’s comment, you can see Ontario’s live power generation and consumption data here: http://www.ieso.ca/Pages/Power-Data/default.aspx It includes generation by source so you can see the principles of this OP play out in real time.

Eye on the Market – Energy Outlook 2017
Many Rivers to Cross
Decarbonization breakthroughs and challenges

One of the interesting points is that energy from biomass is not instantly carbon neutral. It may take many years, i.e. more than 50, sometimes a lot more, before benefits are observed, depending on exactly what biomass is used, what it’s used for and many other factors. See topic #4.

And so any coal-fired power station that switched to burning, say, wood pellets, would have protests from climate change activists. And there would be government enquiries if that government had carbon reduction policies in place.

Maybe not. I can see that perhaps some governments might like the idea of calling burning wood and plants “carbon-neutral”.

Biomass is a bit of an involved subject so I haven’t got to the bottom of it, but I find it hard to believe it can be carbon-neutral even over any time horizon. I find it easy to believe it might be better than natural gas over some time horizon. (That doesn’t mean I believe or know that it is, just I don’t have any prior knowledge either way).

The JPM study shows some interesting graphs. Generating electricity from biomass generates more CO2 over a 100 year time-horizon than using natural gas:

.. and I’m not sure if the natural gas comparison included extraction & transportation (pipeline) costs. It did have efficiency % for gas of 45% whereas a modern Combined-Cycle Gas Turbine plant is 57% measured from inlet flange to output of transformer so perhaps it does. Or maybe just pipeline efficiency. As with all numbers, buyer beware..